


Neverending Nightmares & Calming Catnaps

by McKayRulez



Series: <-Sam & Rodney - Geeks in Love - < [15]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Atlantis: Legacy Series - Various Authors, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Hurt Rodney McKay, Hybrids, Medical Trauma, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Recovered Memories, Rodney McKay Whump, SGA Series: Legacy, Sleepovers, Sub Rodney McKay, Transformation, Trauma, Wraith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 21:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18533515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McKayRulez/pseuds/McKayRulez
Summary: Even though Quicksilver (Rodney McKay) has been mostly cured of the Wraith retrovirus, everything isn't as joyous as it should be to be back home. His mind still suffers. At least he has his Queen to help him out.





	Neverending Nightmares & Calming Catnaps

Quicksilver tossed and turned as a horrid concoction of memories and nightmares appeared in horrid flashes within his mind. 

Aggressive and taunting Wraith swarmed around him leeringly. The sounds of P-90 fire, explosions and the zaps of stunners were heard in the distance, as Atlantis was ambushed. 

He gaze traveled upward, as a wraith dart flew over head in a shrill screech. A beam of light embracing his body as it swept over him. 

He screamed as he was pressed against a gurney. The crack of bone, loud in his ears. Blood burning like cinders in his veins. His nails grew out into pointy feral claws as he scratched at his restraints, trying to brace himself against the pain of rebirth. 

His screaming deepen and his teeth fell and broke away in his mouth as new crystal like sharp teeth pierced his soft gums. 

His eyes shifted and stung, and his hair grew fuller and longer in a platinum silver mane. His skin felt like an angry army of ants were burrowing into every inch of his pores. 

Violently and spontaneously, the skin on his palm tore open and blood gushed down his forearm and dripped off his elbow. 

The screams of terror were heard from all around him. The faces of his old friends and family were looking at him, disturbed and ashamed. They turned their collective gazes away. Their trust lost. 

After all, why should they trust him? He was just a monster, with pale green skin and sickly irises, and a new mouth to feed. 

A deep primal agony pounded from within his palm, and caused him to lurch forward to his knees, grabbing his wrist as he tried to hold back the intense desire of the need, but couldn’t. 

Queen Death’s Wraith eyes were staring directly into his. A mirror of his own. 

He struggled to breath, as he screamed and fought back, trying to escape that commanding presence. 

She was not his queen, his queen was another. He knew it deep inside his soul. 

She lunged at him hissing, palm raised behind her head, and ready to feed on him in disappointment. 

“NOOOO!” 

\--

He shot up forward in bed in a panic, his body drenched in cold sweat. His covers askew and twisted. He quickly turned on the lights to his room with a thought. Eager eyes, checking every empty corner for invaders and found none. His senses confirmed it. 

He shook as fear gripped his chest and he gasped as tears began to flow from his blue eyes. He fought back the tears, wiping them away with his arm. Then looked away quickly from the unsettling pale tan skin he found there. 

He pushed himself off the bed and quickly left the desolate room. 

Bare feet pounded across the cold smooth floors in rapid succession, as his mind seeked out the only one who could calm him.. 

His master. 

\-- 

Sam heard a soft knocking on her door. “My Queen?” A soft timid voice called out questioningly.

She recognized the voice immediately and got up to answer it. She looked up at a red eyed and exhausted Rodney. He bowed his head embarrassed and looked like he was about ready to back pedal away, like he had made a huge mistake again, like he always did each night. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, My Queen.” 

Sam closed her eyes refraining herself from asking McKay not to call her that. The doctor’s made it clear Rodney mentally couldn’t help it. His mind was still wired like a wraith and he still had a majority of their natural instincts to go by. One of which translated her role as his superior into one of a Hive Queen. He couldn’t fight that nature even if he wanted to, regardless of mostly being reverted back to being human again. 

She raised her hand to stop him from retreating. “It’s fine.” She forced a smile. “I hadn’t started sleeping yet anyway.. It’s the nightmares again, isn’t it?”

Quicksilver’s eyes darted to the side, away from her gaze. “Yeah…” His pale skin flushed. A part of himself that came from the past, (A name he hadn’t managed to mentally reclaim just yet, as it was an old life he didn’t feel a part of anymore..), the one his Queen refers to as ‘Rodney’, always hated this. The outward displaying of weakness and vulnerability. The need to ask for help was a failure to his old self in the game of life, where everyone was in competition. It was all so demoralizing. 

However now, a part of him always felt relieved when help would be given.. Making it so he wasn’t alone in the middle of the night, with his thoughts, memories and fears. 

“Can I.. Spend the night over here again?” He finally asked, after taking a deep breath. 

Sam looked him over sympathetically and stepped aside to let him in. “Sure.”

Everynight was the same ritual. Ever since Rodney had been brought back to Atlantis and de-wraithified, to the best of Carson’s and Keller’s abilities, he started to slowly remember things from his time as ‘Quicksilver’ and it had been deeply traumatic for him. McKay kept having PTSD fueled nightmares, and he also developed a phobia of being alone. Afraid he could be kidnapped by the wraith again and re-given the retrovirus, only to relive the nightmare. 

Sam laid on her bed and let Rodney position himself against her side. As he settle the weight of his head on top of her stomach, to use as a pillow to get comfortable, Sam let her thoughts wander. 

How had they gotten to this point? Were she could so easily let him get this close and be this intimate in such a way they never had before? 

Maybe she pitied him, or maybe it was because she knew it wasn’t his fault. As bad as Rodney had been, in his fully human past, he didn’t deserve to be kidnapped, tortured, and turned into a wraith. He never asked for what happened to him, just as much as she didn’t ask to be host for multiple entities in her own past. 

It could also be because she knew she had nothing to fear from him, unlike the rest. Rodney, while he was Quicksilver, never once threatened her or hurt her, and it was all the clearer now with how her past role as Atlantis’s leader and McKay’s superior, transformed into a subconscious Queen like role in his mind. 

Regardless of what it was that brought them together, in response, Sam let Rodney sleepover whenever he needed a friend to keep him company and keep him calm, and he really was running out of friends to help him with that. So here they where. 

“That Wraith Queen is dead. None of the remaining Wraith will ever take you again.” She gently reminded him, as she stared at the ceiling, trying to think of all the words he desperately needed to hear. “It’s finally over.” 

“It’s never over.” Quicksilver replied soberly. “At least, not until the memories fade.. And bad memories have a way of sticking with you.. And never being forgotten.. No matter how much we wish it would.. Like a scar that will never fade.” He thought aloud, as he remembered his past scars, then added, “Or a nightmare that you can never wake up from..”

Sam’s eyes slid away as she thought of her friends and their traumas and hard lives that will never be rectified. 

Vala, and her difficult upbringing, to becoming a Goa’uld, and then losing her daughter to the Ori. How was she so strong in the face of such adversity? 

Teal’c’s people may be freed now, but all those innocent lives taken and those many years his people were forced to waste, all in the pursuit of false gods can never be given back. 

Daniel and the loss of his family, and his own life, over and over and over. What must it be like mentally, to know how death feels like and live to tale the tell despite the painful death suffered. 

Not to mention Jack and his failed marriage, the loss of his poor young son, and the tortures he was given by Ba’al. 

The nightmare surely would never be over for some of them. 

When Sam finally looked back at Rodney, she noticed he was now staring up at her. She obviously didn’t have Queen Wraith telepathy, but she didn’t need it to know something was clearly on his mind. “What?”

His lips turned into a slant frown, eyes looking downcast and lost. “Nothing.. I..” He sighed, then looked back up at her sheepishly and reached up, cupping her face. “Just.. Just keep me company, okay?”

“Of course.”

“Can you keep petting my hair until I fall asleep?”

“Yeah.” Sam gave a small sympathetic smile, as she ran her fingers through his hair. “I can do that.”

When he finally shifted comfortably onto her and settled down, she reached down and began to pet his head. She didn’t know why, but he always seemed to calm down at the gesture. Perhaps it was some Queen will domination affect.. Or maybe Wraith instincts were more like cats.. Whatever it was, it worked. She felt his coiled tension loosen from his body, becoming less rigid and uptight, as her fingers ran through his long white hair. 

He really needed this stress reliever. 

McKay didn’t really have anything stable in his life anymore. His time as a wraith had strained his old friendships to a breaking point, when he unknowingly betrayed them to their worst enemies. It wasn’t really his fault, of course. He suffered the memory loss effects just as Michael had, and had been told he had been a wraith all along, which is why he helped them. While everyone could logically understand that.. It wasn’t something so easily processed when it came to their emotions, and they took it out on him. 

Keller refused his proposal and left him. Sheppard felt too awkward around him to even look him in the eye, in contrast to Ronon, who death stared at him at all opportunities, and Teyla’s wraith connection left her to high strung and on constant alert with him on base, making her uneasy. Zelenka and Woolsey timidly stayed at least ten feet away from him at all times, with an irrational fear of being eaten at any moment, and Loren just never could stand the guy to begin with. 

The SGC couldn’t trust him either, and he lost his role as head scientist. He was also refused any technology to play with that he could turn against them, which, in the technological skill set that was McKay, basically meant no access to literally everything. 

All in all, McKay didn’t have a support system or anyone really in his corner, and that job ended up falling into her lap, literally. 

A sound arose her from her wandering thoughts. A strange purr like noise was radiating from Rodney’s throat. She looked down at him, to find he was gazing up at her with love and affection. She was sure if he had a cat tail it would be lashing itself against her bed rhythmically. 

As his eyes took in her beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes, in the back of his mind he kept praying that maybe this time would be different. This time he would have a good dream. Unfortunately, the tightness in his chest told him otherwise and his hopelessness was polluting his mind. The only way out of the self swallowing pit of despair was Sam, and he was holding her gaze to his own for dear life. 

As Carter’s soothing strokes lulled his eyes to a close, he felt Sam’s warm body heat, the soft breeze of her breath through his hair, the scent of her shampoo, and the swaddle of her familiar cozy blankets.

Maybe.. Just maybe..

If he was lucky, he’d have a good dream,...

And it would be about Sam.

She leaned her face closer to his, running a hand over his collar that she had adorned his neck with. She then placed her slender fingers under his chin, gently forcing him to bring his head up from her stomach, and up to her face. She gave him a kiss on his forehead. “Sleep.” She whispered, and her words were his command, as his eyes immediately drifted to a close, as he settled his head back down to her stomach, and his breathing changed, as he fell into a deep hibernation state. 

She smiled down upon her wraith cat geek boy for a couple minutes, then laid her head back down upon her soft pillows. Her own mind following her own command, as sweet dreams took her away.


End file.
